Gold for Yahoo – #NBCfail hits Twitter – Google movie

Gold for Yahoo

As London 2012 fever gripped the world, Search Engine Land set out to answer the all-important question - which search engine is best for Olympic searches? More specifically, editor Danny Sullivan decided to compare how Google, Bing and Yahoo display London 2012 medal tables when users search for the term 'Olympics'.

The result?

Bing collected bronze (aka last place) for failing to show any medal data. Google claimed silver for showing the top five countries by medal count in its Knowledge Graph on the right-hand side (pictured). And Yahoo won gold by showing the nine best countries, as well as offering people the chance to view comprehensive results by clicking a 'Complete medal counts by country' link.

Sullivan's praise of Yahoo comes just a fortnight after he congratulated Yahoo on hiring Marissa Mayer as its new CEO. It had been widely predicted that interim CEO Ross Levinsohn would take the position on a permanent basis, more or less by default. Perhaps inevitably then, this week also saw confirmation that Levinsohn had resigned from Yahoo.

Twitter apologises for #NBCfail

The Olympics may have provided a rare good news story for Yahoo this week, but it was a different story over on Twitter. The micro-blogging service ran into a firestorm on - well - Twitter when it suspended the account of British journalist Guy Adams (pictured). Best known as Los Angeles correspondent at the Independent, Adams has been a vocal critic of broadcast giant NBC in recent weeks, particularly its decision to withhold live coverage of events like the Olympics opening ceremony for primetime viewing in the US. Coincidentally, it just so happens that Twitter's partner for the Olympics is...NBC.

Twitter users were quick to voice their displeasure over the suspension, many of them using the hashtag #NBCfail.

Now at last, it's becoming clear what happened. It appears that the breaking point for Twitter came when Adams tweeted the email address of a senior NBC executive and encouraged his followers to complain about the lack of coverage. Twitter staffers who were working alongside NBC spotted the tweet and urged the broadcaster to report the violation, which the micro-blogging service then acted upon by suspending Adams' account. In a post on the Twitter Blog, Twitter's general counsel Alex Macgillivray has since acknowledged that this was a 'mess up':

"This behaviour is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us. We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is - whether a business partner, celebrity or friend."

For the record, Twitter eventually backed down and reinstated Guy Adam's Twitter account on Tuesday. Adams has since added tens of thousands of new followers thanks in no small part to his newfound fame.

Google's new intern

The Social Network put Facebook on the silver screen, despite Mark Zuckerberg's misgivings, and now it's Google's turn. According to Search Engine Watch, filming has begun on a new big-budget movie called The Internship, which is set in the hallowed corridors of the world's most popular search engine. The plot sees best friends Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn decide to join Google's intern programme after losing their high-flying sales jobs. It was written by Vaughn himself, who spilt the beans in an interview with the Huffington Post last week.

He said: "I'm working with Owen Wilson on a movie called 'The Internship' where Owen and I lose our jobs and become interns at Google. We get free food, we get to play ping pong and take naps...We find a way to get into the intern program and try to get a job there. It's fun to go back and do some R-rated comedies again."

That last comment will probably discourage search marketers hoping to get the inside scoop about what really goes on at Mountain View. As will the fact that it's being filmed not in the Googleplex but 2,500 miles away in the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. If that still hasn't put you off, you can expect The Internship to hit our screens sometime next year.

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